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A hard NDP shift to the left in the Corbyn, Sanders era: Harper

The NDP’s federal leadership race is being contested under the radar but represents a fundamental shift in Canadian politics ahead of 2019.

The NDP leadership candidates are hardly setting the country on fire, but for students of Canadian politics they represent a huge shift underway, even if it is happening largely under the radar, writes Tim Harper. (Graham Hughes / THE CANADIAN PRESS file photo)

Charlie Angus sounded bold, although he broke from the bold-fest by choosing other words.

These are your five candidates for leader of the federal NDP and they made something of a stealth visit to downtown Toronto Thursday night, offering their progressive pedigrees at an all-candidates debate sponsored by the United Steelworkers.

They are hardly setting the country on fire, but for students of Canadian politics they represent a huge shift underway, even if it is happening largely under the radar.

This is a federal NDP that appears determined to shift hard to the left and shuck any vestige of the tepid, disastrous drift to the centre under Tom Mulcair in 2015.

This is a party that needs to be daring and embrace a social democratic era that is personified by Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn, and decidedly not Mulcair.

It was likely no coincidence that the biggest cheer of the night came for Ashton, when she invoked the names of the two, rumpled old white guys who have proved, with varying degrees of success, that social democracy or flat-out socialism can be paraded as a platform, not pushed into a dark closet.

Ashton calls herself an “old millennial” and is the furthest from the Corbyn-Sanders persona in this race. She likes to shout out words like “repression,” “oppression,” and “racism.” She talks about standing up to the rich and joining movements and she tells New Democrats it’s as easy as ABC, “Ashton, Bernie, Corbyn.”

For one night, she pulled it off, but her stridency will likely wear thin because there really are only shades of grey between the candidates.

There are other reasons for the party to return to its roots.

They were “out-lefted,” by Justin Trudeau in 2015, but Trudeau has since left much fertile ground on the progressive side of the spectrum, whether it be broken promises on electoral reform or transparency, or stalled reforms to the environment or Indigenous reconciliation.

If one wants to see what the federal New Democrats will likely put on the table for voters in 2019, the template is in British Columbia.

It will pledge real electoral change.

It will work toward Indigenous decolonization and real reconciliation, not the symbolic reconciliation so far favoured by Trudeau.

It will take a much tougher line on pipelines and climate change.

It will aggressively tax the rich and impose tough levies on real estate speculators.

It will pledge to overturn economic inequality and pledge solutions to precarious employment, rejecting Finance Minister Bill’s Morneau acceptance of it as a fait accompli.

There will no longer be talk of balanced budgets. There will be no more kid gloves with corporate taxes. They will likely push to lower the voting age to 16.

But for the moment, the party has problems.

Few Canadians are engaged in this leadership race, and even those who follow federal politics would be hard-pressed to name the five candidates.

Thursday’s debate was the only one scheduled in the GTA — a region where it must rebound if it is to be relevant after the 2019 vote — but it drew little attention.

New Democrats in British Columbia have no time to focus on this race. They are on the cusp of government in an ongoing political drama on the West Coast.

That saga is also drawing all the attention of Alberta New Democrats who are consumed with what an NDP-Green alliance in B.C. will do about a major pipeline expansion that has federal approval.

Manitoba New Democrats are focused on choosing Ojibwa Wab Kinew, a rapper, broadcaster and author, as its next leader.

And now comes summer, when trips to the lake, barbecues and summer humidity choke off interest in politics.

One insider predicted Friday this race will come down to a few key weeks in September.

The man or woman who wins this will be the candidate who stakes a solid, unshakable foundation on the progressive left and resists the drift to the centre at all costs.

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